Only my dreams and my future.
“A sentimental trinket I found in the abbey crypt.”
He deflected the half-truth with a grin that did not reach his eyes. He slipped the braided band of silver onhis finger. “Then you will understand if I find the ring equally sentimental—if only to keep you near.”
There had been no time to think or to respond. “Nooo,” sounded weak against the frantic beating of her heart.
He did not even know what he had done.
Ruark felt a moment’s dizziness that almost made him stumble, and the heel of his palm went to his temple as he opened his eyes and peered at Rose narrowly, wondering what the hell kind of curse she had just put on him. He had been half expecting that she would have taken off running. The instant the thought had also seemed to occur to her, he recovered enough to grab her arm.
“Too late, my lady.”
She gasped as he pulled her to where his men waited. “Let go of me! What are you doing?”
She shoved against him as he felt the pockets of her jacket and her calves for any weapons, stopping short of running his hands over her bosom and backside. But as he rose in front of her, his eyes told her he would strip her bloody naked if she gave him cause.
One of his men held Loki’s reins. The horse carried no saddle. Ruark lifted Rose to the red stallion and hoped she could ride bareback.
“You assume I am more valuable to Hereford than your brother,” she said.
“You are a treasure to any man, Lady Roselyn.” He grinned, for indeed she was like silver in moonlight. “More than you know.”
The sound of a horse at a gallop intruded. A large bay crested the rise in front of him. “Jason’s coomin’,” one of his men called.
A moment later, the lad reined in his horse in front of Ruark.
“Raiders, my lord.” Sound carried in the glade. He could hear the distant thunder of horses. “At least two dozen.”
“Friends of yours?” he asked Rose.
“Geddes Graham leads those miscreants,” she said. “It is like him to be out on a full moon causing mischief. I would say that he is harmless, but it would be a lie. Still, I would not wish for you to kill him. I am friends with his mother.”
He signaled another rider some distance down the road behind him. “I have no desire for a bloodbath, Jason. Make sure the others know. Warn Colum he will probably be having guests,” he said.
Ruark had left Colum to watch the abbey in case Rose returned there while he and his men had spoken to the mountebank and learned that there was cemetery not far from the woods. With Rose’s love for the macabre and crypts, Ruark deduced she would come here. He had been right. But the presence of the raiders concerned him.
“Geddes will not harm Friar Tucker,” Rose said. “Even he would not dare.”
Ruark mounted his own horse and pulled on Loki’s reins. He moved off the road and into the woods. As he rode past his men awaiting him at the cemetery’s edge, they fell in behind him. He kept to the trees as best as the landscape allowed and rode quickly.
Rose rode just behind and to the left of him. An occasional glance over his shoulder told him she was still on the horse, though he didn’t have to look to know. He could feel her. Smell the lilac encasing his senses. Her docility should have made him suspicious for she was the least submissive woman he had ever known, but it was enough just to keep her out of his head.
He clenched and unclenched his gloved fist on the reins trying to ease the tension from his body, annoyed that hecould not. A mile later, his small party of riders joined two more of his men awaiting him. The moon remained ghostly bright, skimming the treetops, and soon Ruark was concentrating on the thin ribbon of trail.
Traveling for a half hour, he followed a path parallel to the river before he broke into the open. Except for Colum, the rest of his men were there. They fell in behind him as he rode his horse down the loamy bank and into the river. A cold spray of water leaped to life around him and slowly rose to his calves. His men had worked two days to find a place shallow enough to traverse the river without using the public crossing north of here. To his left, the river’s rocky bed dropped and the fast-moving current would grab a person. A two day’s ride away laid Kerr land, and safety.
In that instant, the stallion’s reins went slack. He twisted in the saddle. Somehow, Rose had cut the reins. Ruark cursed. He swung his horse around and grabbed the stallion’s bridle, barely ducking in time as she made the horse rear. Throwing her leg over the horse, she slipped from the back of the stallion and into the rapidly moving current. For a moment, she disappeared into the swirling blackness only to bob up ten feet away. Even as he heard someone shouting in the darkness, Ruark had already removed his boots and jumped into the river after her.
Chapter 5
Rose didn’t know how long she had been in the water. She had swum maybe a hundred yards when the icy current grabbed her hard and would not relinquish its fierce grip, even after she found purchase in the rocks. The undertow pulled at her, thrashed her to and fro. Driftwood wedged between the rocks pressed against her.
Somehow, she’d managed to remove her jacket, nearly drowned attempting the feat, but her jerkin and breeches still weighed her down. She lost her grip on the jacket and watched it sail away, lashed and tangled by the boiling white water. She had learned to swim in this river, knew it well, had not for one moment thought that escaping into it could actually kill her. When she slid from the stallion’s back into the water, she had not considered that the recent rains had swollen the river to its outer banks.
With the moon having gone behind the clouds, she struggled to see. She could hear shouting behind her. She looked back over her shoulder just in time to see Roxburghe slide from his horse and push off into the river after her. Panic struck her. She struggled to pull herself onto the slick rocks at the water’s edge, but her hands slipped, the current jerked her backward and swept her along like human flotsam.
The river’s rolling banks became cliffs that began to rise on either side of her, creating a shadowed narrow channel. The passage became a black abyss. The current picked up speed and power. She was headed straight for a waterfall! She swam harder at an angle, fighting to reach the shallower water.
